


The World Will Follow After

by amoeve



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Leia ships it, Multi, SO MUCH FLUFF, cinnamon rolls galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 22:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoeve/pseuds/amoeve
Summary: Poe has one of those moments where everything is relaxed and happy andbalanced, here on a cool duracrete floor with two good-looking humans and the quiet whistles of BB-8 in the other room.(Otherwise known as: Poe gets a clue.)





	The World Will Follow After

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beautiful beta, [intentandinvention](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentandinvention/pseuds/intentandinvention), for whom I wrote these precious cinnamon rolls being ridiculous and adorable. <3

It’s a strange sweep of chaos that brings Finn and Rey into Poe’s life.

A mission becomes a massacre.

A trip to pick up some intel turns into a tour of First Order vehicles and torture techniques – and just as he’s given himself up for dead, a handsome Stormtrooper defects and sweeps him up into the sky.

And then they’re running, and finding new friends and old friends, and there’s a huge, devastating explosion of a weapon that’s destroyed half a star system.

At the end of it all, two beautiful people with no clue about social niceties have joined the Resistance.

After a week of finding Rey talking to the machines and hiding from everyone except Luke, and Finn’s bewildered questions about everything that start as soon as he wakes up, BB-8 informs Poe that since droids aren’t allowed to adopt biologicals, Poe’s going to have to do it for him.

*

The thing is, Finn wasn’t raised by a family. He was programmed to feel loyalty to a concept, and in particular, to the other members of his unit. The idea of loving one person exclusively was actively discouraged – the Order was all.

Love and lust were dangerous distractions that divided people. He was part of a whole, and to survive the war, his unit were extensions of his own self.

So it makes perfect sense to Finn, when he takes the logic he learned as a cadet and only keeps the parts that he thinks are worthwhile.

Love is good, it’s the warmth that binds people together and gives them meaning, and there are different kinds of love and different kinds of people and who’s to say that one is better than another? That one is _right_?

He’s loved Poe since he saw him beaten, bloodied, and defiantly refusing to be broken. Poe trusted someone he had no reason to trust. He respected Finn’s sense of self enough to give him a _name_.

Finn loved that Poe held himself together and leapt at the chance to fly, even when he knew that they might fall.

To be fair, they did fall almost immediately. Through most of an atmosphere.

But they survived.

He’s loved Rey since he saw first her, too, bright and shining and shouting at him because she understood the value of stolen property.

He loved that Rey didn’t look on droids as _things_ – that she took BB-8’s word as the truth, that she didn’t doubt a droid’s story just because it is a droid. She didn’t cut Finn any slack and buy into any of that mechanical microaggression by saying “Hey, man, you’re a biological, tell me what happened, would you?”

Not Rey. She knows what it’s like to have no voice, and she heard BB-8’s, and she listened.

He was surprised at himself, when his first instinct was to take her hand and run, but only until he thought about it later.

He’d never really _touched_ anyone before. But he knew he liked her, just from the fact that she listened to a droid. He knew there was something in her that he wanted to keep safe. And something in him, something long-forgotten, buried underneath years of training, stuck out his hand and grabbed hers as they ran, because he wanted to keep her close to him, to keep that light in her alive.

The Order’s propaganda is gone, now. What remains with Finn is the firm conviction that love is love, and people are people, and sometimes you realise that some things are just _right_.

(Sometimes you realise they’re right when you’re already halfway through doing them, and you’ve maybe kind of made a mistake but whatever, take my hand and run.)

He had never held anyone’s hand before Rey. He’d never saved a life before Poe. And now he’s got them in his hands and going to keep them safe no matter what, and he’s never, ever going to let go.

*

Rey lived alone for so long that she has no idea how to cope with being around people.

She fetched the last Jedi back from exile, though. She flew with Han Solo, she helped blow up Starkiller, she escaped Kylo Ren without help.

Before she has the chance to speak to even ten members of the Resistance, she’s sprinkled with the stardust that comes with being caught up in events that will, in their own time, become legendary.

People approach her with shining eyes and say, _you’re Rey_ , and _well done_ , and _you’re welcome here_. So Rey struggles, wrapped in the warm arms of the Resistance. She needs space to roam, to breathe, to be.

Finn understands that. After his whole life spent as a soldier, immersed in his purpose, his only thoughts focused on his orders, he has no idea how to cope with being a person.

*

And Poe?

Poe feels kinda responsible for them. They’re a pair of lost little lambs, and he’s the sheepdog who wants to guide them home. Or BB-8’s the sheepdog, and he’s just the one whistling on the hills. Y’know. There’s a metaphor here.

*

Poe’s always found people easy to be around. He loves the tumble of talk, the stories that steer in from the stars, the people he sees around and then are gone for a while and then come back again.

The Resistance is like an ocean: the tide comes in, lifts the mood, goes out.

After a while, he realises that Rey and Finn struggle with every wave on new people – everyone who knows them by name, has carved a starry-eyed space to welcome them in.

Also, General Organa maybe nudged him in the direction of taking their new recruits under his, hah, wings.

He stays back at her request after a routine meeting.

“You find it easy to talk to people,” she says, “and I think our new friends are finding the Resistance a little… overwhelming.”

“You should know, ma’am, your brother hides in the forest most days,” Poe grins at her.

Leia just rolls her eyes. “And he still doesn’t understand why I didn’t want to train as a Jedi.”

After a moment, Poe asks, “General – if you don’t mind me asking – why not?”

“I don’t mind, Commander.” She pauses for a moment, her eyes softening. “I could have, I suppose. But I wanted a family.” Another pause, and she sounds rueful as she says, “I put the Republic first.”

Poe doesn’t know whether she means before her family, or before her desire to use her gifts in the Force – or both.

Poe wants to hug her, to apologise – wants not to be on duty so he can speak to the woman who helped to raise him after his parents died. He understands, now. What she’s telling him, really, hidden behind her words, is that ideologies are important, but so is taking care of people.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

But she looks up, and smiles. “No, please,” she says. “You’ve earned the right to ask me a few questions, Poe.”

He clears his throat. “I’ll keep an eye on Finn and Rey.”

Leia nods, as if that’s all there is to it. “Bring them for dinner sometime,” she says. “Off-duty.” Her eyes are twinkling again.

And if he’s beaming when he walks out of the room, well, Poe is more than happy to have an official reason to spend time with the dynamic duo.

He will admit  – to nobody but himself – he’s a little keen on them both anyway. Jess has been calling him greedy – but they’re both delicious. And absolutely adorable.

*

One evening, as they’re lying sprawled on the floor of Rey’s quarters staring at the rain pour down onto the leaves, Poe leans over and nudges her. “Remember how round-eyed you got the first time it rained?”

She blushes a little, because she knows she’s being teased, but this is the thing that has Poe giddy: she glances up and smiles because she’s not ashamed of anything she’s ever done. “Yeah, I remember.”

She’d run into the forest and stood there for an hour with her arms open: cold, trembling, delighted.

“You know people say someone’s green when they’re inexperienced?” Finn asks after a second. “I mean, not that you’re inexperienced, but… for you, you know, not seeing the stars, you were green about all the green. Which I guess makes you… what colour was Jakku? I’m gonna go with ‘beige’. But being beige makes you sound boring, and you’re not boring.”

Poe and Rey exchange a glance, because Finn’s off in his Finn-world again.

“Not making much of the sense, buddy,” Poe says, easily.

“Hush.” Finn waves a hand. “Jessika’s brew has gone to my head. I’m thinking in colours.”

Rey giggles. “Told you not to drink so much.” She steals his cup, and he says,

“Hey! Don’t scavenge my stuff!”

And Poe has one of those moments where everything is relaxed and happy and _balanced_ , here on a cool duracrete floor with two good-looking humans and the quiet whistles of BB-8 in the other room.

Rey tilts her head at him as she drinks. “You still with us, Poe?”

“I,” he says, not even slightly embarrassed about how dreamy he sounds right now, “am right here, and delighted about it.”

Her eyes flicker to Finn and back to him. “Oh, good,” she says, like she’s got a secret, and then she wipes her lips with the back of her hand.

“Poe’s always with us,” Finn says, dropping his arm down from his eyes and rolling over onto his stomach, flashing him one of those incredibly warm smiles.

“That a problem?” Poe asks lazily, leaning forward to swipe the cup from Rey. “Bored of me, huh?” He winks at her, and she laughs.

“No, I like it,” Finn says, after a moment.

“It’s great,” Rey says – but Poe looks at her, because there’s something else there, he can hear it. She glances at Finn again before she looks back up at Poe. “I mean, it’s great to spend my time with the two best specimens of human eye-candy on this rock. I feel popular.”

Finn snorts. “You _are_ popular. People are always asking me if you’re free.”

“They ask if you’re free, too,” she says. And then she grins. “And they _definitely_ ask if Poe’s free. Dreamboat Dameron,” Rey chuckles, stealing back the cup – now empty of Jessika’s bitter brew.

“Don’t remind me,” Finn groans. “Everyone keeps asking what you’re like in bed,” he glares at Poe. “Sometimes it’s how they start conversations. ‘Hi, so you defected from the First Order to rescue Poe, what’s he like in the sack?’. The first time,” he says, rising up on an elbow, “I told them _I didn’t rescue you in a sack_. They laughed,” he says, mournfully, and now Poe’s laughing, too, and so is Rey.

“Can’t believe people ask that, though,” Poe says, after a moment. “I mean… why?”

“Because you’re hot.” Finn looks at him like he’s dumb.

“I was gonna say ‘handsome’,” Rey shrugs.

Poe is actually, honest-to-goodness blushing. “Shut up,” he says.

“They never believe me when I tell them we haven’t… you know.” Rey’s fiddling with the cup, now.

Poe blinks. “Really?”

“You have legendary sexual prowess, man,” Finn says, with feeling. “Of course, it was educational at first, but – ”

“Educational?” Poe interrupts before he can stop himself.

It’s Finn’s turn to blink. “Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve never – ” he stops. “Stormtrooper training? Not sexy. In fact, I’m pretty sure we were drugged so we wouldn’t want sex. I mean, I never started wanting it until… recently.”

Poe isn’t sure, but he thinks Finn is blushing. “That… _sucks_.”

“No, there was no sucking,” Finn deadpans.

Poe turns to Rey, and she just shrugs at him before he can articulate the question. “Don’t look at me for sexual experience. I’ve lived alone since childhood.” She runs her thumb around the rim of her cup. “Didn’t fancy the pickings at Niima outpost.”

Poe tilts his head. “Fair, I guess.”

“I mean, it doesn’t suck that I want it now,” Finn says – and then he sort of ducks his head, biting his lip. “Though, actually, yes it does.”

He looks at them: Rey sitting like a bird that’s prepared to take flight at any moment, Finn gazing from her to Poe and back like a magnet swinging between poles.

“I _do_ spend all my time with you, don’t I?” Poe says, seeing a pattern fall into place. Sees Finn wanting to have sex but not knowing how, sees how Rey has been wondering for a while but knows she doesn’t have the right nous to always read a situation right. He catches her eye. “Rey, not to quote Master Skywalker or anything, but you should trust your instincts.”

Rey bites her lip. “I did wonder,” she admits. “Once or twice.” Her eyes flick to Finn again.

Finn grew up in a unit and was conditioned not to have sex and has drunk quite a lot of Jessika’s awful concoction. “I’m lost. Are we still talking about sex with Poe? Or, I mean,” he adds, hastily, “you know, Poe, you, my man, and also, the act of sex.”

Rey’s eyes sparkle at Poe, and it’s like the sunset rippling on the waters of Takodana, something he wants to chase and chase and catch in both of his hands. “Wanna show him?”

Poe hasn’t feel this breathless in _years_. “I’ll definitely try.”

“In the words of the great Jedi masters – do, or do not,” Rey intones, impishly, putting the cup down and reaching for Poe. “There is no try.”

He takes a hold of Finn’s shoulder so that Finn knows he’s included, too, and leans forward into Rey, planting a kiss on her mouth. After a lingering, lovely moment, he pulls back from her, ducks his head and kisses Finn, who tastes of alcohol and whose skin is vaguely prickly because he didn’t shave today, and the contrast is _delightful_.

There’s colour staining Rey’s cheeks when he pulls back, and Finn is staring at them both, and Poe feels it searing through him like the heat and light of plunging through a new atmosphere with a whole world before him to explore.

The world is spinning, bright and beautiful, all the pieces in place, and he has his two favourite people here in his arms and he feels like he’s going to start flying, like he’s never going to come down.

“So that was awesome,” Finn says after a moment. “Uh… yes please?”

Rey leans in and presses a kiss to Finn’s lips, and then her sweet, soft mouth is back on Poe’s. After a moment, her lips part, and he tastes just a tantalising hint of her tongue.

She leans back for a second and laughs. “I am _not_ telling Master Luke that you quoted him right before you kissed us,” she says. “And you’re not telling him that I creatively interpreted one of the great pieces of wisdom from his old masters, either.”

“Oh, of course not. We’re very supportive of your vocation,” Finn says, brushing hair back from her cheek.

“I’m sure we can accommodate your training,” Poe grins at her, “Master Rey.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Do you have a Jedi kink, Commander Dameron?” Her voice is low and authoritative as she leans in and takes hold of his collar.

His mouth goes dry, and from the way she grins at him, he knows that she knows the answer is a surprised but emphatic _yes_.

Finn laughs. “If he doesn’t, I definitely do.” His hand is warm on Poe’s arm.

“Another time,” Rey promises, leaning in to them both again, and Poe feels definite glee at the notion that this is going to happen more than once.

*

It’s Finn who brings it up first, because he’s always trying to work out what’s normal and what isn’t. “Is this the kind of subversive behaviour that needs to be reported as a blackmail risk?”

As far as pillow talk goes, it’s not so much a buzzkill as an electric shock. Poe flinches, and blinks at him – but Rey just stares, uncomprehending. She sits up, utterly unashamed of her nakedness. That’s something else Poe likes about her - she acts as if she’s never felt shame.

“There are multiple worlds where households have three or four adult members,” Rey says, frowning. “There’s even one world where it’s expected that a brother is expected to support their sisters and all their sisters’ children, but have no offspring of their own. I bartered for a book once, it was all – ” she blushes “ – _romance_ stories, you know. From different worlds. With lots of sex scenes.”

Poe laughs, feeling warmth threading in his chest alongside an odd frisson that feels off somehow. “Bet you loved those.”

Rey blushes harder and shrugs, her breasts pushing the sheet down, and isn’t that a lovely view. “Hey, I lived alone. I needed some entertainment.”

Finn tilts his head, this way and that. “I mean, sure, I believe you that this is normal,” he shrugs. “I just don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it to people. Everyone else seems to think that human relationships are… just two.”

Poe shrugs, but underneath, he feels a little uncomfortable, and he can’t quite put his finger on why. “Maybe they think, ‘if it ain’t broke’.”

Finn frowns. “It _ain’t_ broke.” And then, a minute later, “What does that mean?”

Rey rolls her eyes as she settles back down. “It’s an idiom. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ It means that people don’t generally try to improve things that they think are okay – even if improvements could make them better.”

“Oh. Well, this is better,” Finn says, and that seems to be the end of it for him. He leans back, and Poe thinks he falls asleep. Just like that.

“Hey,” Rey says softly, and he turns to look down at her.

After weeks of needing to be at the edge of the bed, saying that sleeping with two men made her way too warm, she’s taken to snuggling down between them at night. When she’s awake, she’s lithe with the energy that has only grown stronger since the start of her Jedi training, but next to Finn’s muscles she just looks tiny. He’s amazed at how much strength she packs into such a slender body.

She twists up towards him and tilts her head, apparently scanning him for evidence of something wrong. “What is it you’re worried about, Poe?”

He _is_ worrying, and it’s not like him. His parents, and Generals Organa and Solo, and most of the other humans he knew… they really had been units of two. Even though three, _this_ three, is _right_ …

He glances down at her – and sees real pain crinkling between her eyes. “I’m not ashamed of you, Rey,” he says, and she lets out her breath, and nods. He reaches out to stroke her hair, and feels more than hears her hum in satisfaction. “I’m just working things out.”

*

The thing is – it _lasts_. Mission after mission, all the times that any one or all three of them might go out and not come back – it lasts.

Sometimes it’s just Poe and Finn, and man, that leaves him aching, bruised in the best of ways by spending so much time in the arms of someone so _strong_ – but they curl up together, too, and talk out their experiences of the First Order, and of life in the Resistance, and Poe feels contentment trickle down his spine every time Finn says, “This is great… but it’s great that Rey’s going to come home soon, too.”

Sometimes it’s just Finn and Rey, when Poe’s off on a mission or scouting out something suspicious where only he can be trusted to do a flyby and not be picked up by any scanners, and _damn_ isn’t it nice to come up to two bright-eyed delights who are just buzzing to tell him about this new thing they tried together and they want to try with _him_.

Sometimes it’s just Rey and Poe, and he holds her up against the shower wall and drives into her and she’s like a _wildcat_ , scratches all over his back.

(Sometimes it’s Rey and Poe and she uses the Force to do delicious things to him and her voice is deep and commanding and he has never been so willing to kneel in all his life. And then Finn comes home and Poe watches him beg for her to be in charge and it turns out that a Jedi kink is just as much fun to observe.)

It’s worst when it’s one of them alone, though that only happens rarely.

When Finn and Poe get back after a particularly nasty run through First Order airspace, Rey’s waiting in Poe’s room, practically vibrating with worry, small objects spinning around in place behind her.  When she sees them again, she flings her arms around both of them, tears dripping down her face as their cutlery and tools and cushions thump to the floor.

Rey goes off with Luke to hunt down the Knights of Ren, and Poe and Finn can’t have sex because they’re too worried about her.

Poe comes back flushed with adrenaline from another flight and his Jedi and his ex-Trooper _pounce_ on him.

In the end, Poe realises that this is his home. This beautiful thing where all three of them come and go but leave something permanent behind.

And in the end, the thing that sets people whispering is silence. If you don’t give them a pattern to follow, they wonder, and they make it up for themselves. And it would break Poe’s heart if the rumour mill of the Resistance ever suggested that there was something wrong here.

Because he’s seen the looks. He knows about the quiet bets, the ‘Which one is Poe dating today?’, the ‘he’ll have to pick one sometime’, the insinuation that one of his loves is doing to be _hurt_ by something he will do.

He’s also seen the confused looks by the aliens whose cultures mean they’ve never questioned a relationship that works in threes, the cuffs Chewbacca hands out to stupid cubs who don’t understand what’s in front of their eyes.

And so Poe says, “We’ll just tell them we’re together.”

And Finn looks like that was the only option all along, which Poe sort of expected, and Rey swarms into his arms and kisses him soundly, which to be honest, he sort of didn’t.

“You’re mine,” she says, fiercely. “Both of you. And I will never be ashamed of this, or of you, because I’m yours, too.”

*

So, of course, he goes to the other person who means the world to him, and isn’t surprised that she sees something in the set of his shoulders, in the creases around his eyes.

“I understand you have some… concerns,” Leia says, and she looks at him, expectantly. “And that they’re the kind of concerns that people don’t generally enjoy talking about.”

“I, uh. Have an understanding.” He kicks himself for the hesitation, and then shrugs. Leia has been like a mother to him since he lost his own, and he loves her as much as his long-lost parents. He looks her squarely in the eyes. “With Finn and Rey.”

“It’s times like this that people need a hand to hold,” she says, quite practically. “Or, one in each hand, in your case.”

Poe blinks. “Is that… it?”

Leia tilts her head. “Do you need my approval? I don’t mind, Poe, that sort of thing doesn’t shock me.” She smiles at him. “Alderaanian families traditionally had multiple parents, you know.”

And Poe laughs. Because yes, what he’s been afraid of, all this time, is that what would tear their trio apart would be the confused looks and awkward questions of their comrades and commanders and friends. “I suppose I was just worried that I’d be... a risk, somehow.”

Leia snorts at that. “I’m not sure the First Order are concerned with blackmail, now that we’ve destroyed their planet-sized weapon and retrieved the last remaining Jedi Knight from exile.” She looks down at her own hands, and he wonders if she’s thinking of the things she’s held on to and lost: her son, her brother, her husband, the mother she barely knew, the father who terrorised the galaxy.

At least her brother had come back.

Poe clears his throat, the warmth in his chest threatening to spill into tears. “General – ”

She looks up at him, and though she looks sad, she smiles. “Love them while you have them,” she says, and then she tilts her head. “And I’ll assign you some larger quarters.”

Poe blushes, but she doesn’t mock him. “Thank you, ma’am,” he says, and he executes the correct bow that one offers to a princess – with the specific hand-flourish his mother told him was indicative of the court of Alderaan.

She looks touched. “You charmer, Poe,” she smiles, but he can see she’s moved. “You still haven’t brought them round for dinner.”

Leia hugs him, tightly, before he leaves, and he thinks how lucky he is to have so many people who love him. 

*

Rey and Finn have no surnames.

In the end, they ask if they can take his. He’s so honoured that he beams for three straight days and then remembers he should probably do something special to formalise it all.

Leia doesn’t cry when he asks her to marry him off to Finn and Rey, but she does shed tears throughout the Alderaanian ceremony he’d had Threepio write out for the occasion.

And when Poe stands there with his husband and wife, with all of the Resistance looking on, with Leia's hands resting atop their own as they say the words that bind them together, he thinks, _Yes. This is right. And this is good._  

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Counting Crows’ _Accidentally In Love_.


End file.
